Greetings, people of the P0x! I hope you are having a good week. I certainly am, following the sale of my entire discography on Band Camp a few nights ago. That event got me thinking about something I've been meaning to look into and get resolved for about a week, if not slightly longer.
Since I (and apparently others) have been having problems with both OpenSea (one of the biggest NFT marketplaces) and SolSea (can't create NFTs, can't accept offers, nor buy/mint them and give them away to people and shoddy customer support), I think that I'd best look for alternative NFT marketplaces. Frankly, it's annoying me because I'd rather focus on other things, but I've got to do what I must to get my NFTs circulating and potentially earning. According to NFTify, there are approximately 270 NFT marketplaces in the cryptosphere. How am I ever going to find the right one(s) on which to host my NFTs, without having to build/deploy and host my own marketplace (white label or otherwise)? I honestly have no idea and might have to try a number of them until I find one or two that give(s) me what I want. Ain't nobody got time for that, right?
Fortunately for me, Dave Sawyer has volunteered to be my guinea pig for testing if I can buy/mint one (or more) of my own NFTs and send it/them to him. Those marketplaces that allow me to do that (if any) will be the ones for which I'll leave OpenSea, after first deleting my collections there (since duplicating one's NFTs across marketplaces is generally frowned upon).
Here's what he has selected from my existing art:
- Man on the Moon (Moon Units)
- Red Tractor on the Moon (Moon Units)
- The DAMEgeld
- King Charles III Warhol Painting
- Moon Rock
- Do Kwon as Mr. Burns
Now, that's six NFTs that Mr. Sawyer's picked, which means potentially six marketplaces I've got to find and assess, time and crypto balances willing. I aim to find three (one each for Polygon, Dai/USD Coin and Solana) that meet my criteria.
NFT Marketplaces to Investigate
Here, then, are some that I've found mentioned on various listing sites, in no particular order:
1. Rarible
- Supports Lazy Minting: Yes
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/Yes
2. NFTrade
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/No
3. CandyShop
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/Yes
4. HODL My Moon
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: No/Yes/No
5. Wen Moon Market
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/No
6. GhostMarket
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/No
7. NFTify
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/No
8. OneMint
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/No
9. Unick
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: Yes/Yes/No
10. Dragora
- Supports Lazy Minting: Don't Know
- Supports ETH/MATIC/SOL: No/Yes/No
I've got another ten entries in my list, but they run exclusively on Solana. Since I want to move away from Solana, I'm unlikely to look at them. (I still have to bring in about $100 worth of SOL in order to convert my existing SOL to something else, so that's not going to happen soon.) However, there are other chains and marketplaces worth considering (such as ThetaDrop on Theta), but most NFTs seem to be on ETH, MATIC or SOL, as far as I can tell. One of the potentially interesting Solana-based ones is Soltype, which hosts eBooks as NFTs. Maybe when I've got to the point of having finished and compiled various tutorials into eBooks, I'll see how I fair with that. The short stories in the Fractures series could certainly be a candidate, although I'll likely publish them on Readl first, if that's viable.
How to Choose a(n) NFT Marketplace
Since I obviously don't have the time and energy to try all of the NFT marketplaces listed above, there's got to be some set of guidelines or rules to follow in order to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- UI/UX: Is the website or app's user interface easy to navigate and use, or do you find yourself struggling to create a collection, get your content uploaded and listed?
- Connect Your Wallet: Does the marketplace allow you to connect your web-based wallet(s) and integrate with it/them or do you have to copy & paste long strings between them? Strong wallet integration shows strong blockchain integration.
- Off the Chain: Which blockchains/ecosystems/networks does the marketplace support? Are any of them ones that you prefer to use? (In compiling the above list, I filtered out ones that don't use chains that I use or don't want to. Ethereum-only ones were the first to go.) Multi-chain support is generally a good sign. For me, support for Polygon and/or Solana is acceptable (much as I'm no longer a fan of Solana).
- Gallery: How are your NFTs displayed/represented to potentially interested buyers? Are you allowed to customise this (even if only through a predetermined set of options)? At minimum, it should show title, description, creator and protocol/chain for a collection, as well as the price for a particular NFT within a collection.
- Notifications: Does the marketplace offer functionality to send you notifications when someone buys, mints or makes an offer on either an individual NFT or a collection? Does the marketplace allow you to view activity history?
- SEO: Does the marketplace allow searching for NFTs and collections (by any of creator, name, attributes, media type or all of these)?
- Marketing, Promotion and Sharing: Does the NFT marketplace have built-in tools (or allow you to integrate third-party services such as MailChimp, even if not blockchain/Web3-based) to promote your NFTs to your fans?
Thumbnail image: Various NFT marketplaces, copyright NFTify
